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06/16/03 10:06 |
Chris Frissell |
Railway Age December 22/29
1969 NP opens new $3.5 million
intermodal terminal in Seattle
Northern Pacific is providing better service for a growing volume of TOFC/COFC traffic in the Pacific
Northwest--thanks to construction of
a $3.5 million freight-handling complex at South Seattle. The new intermodal terminal consoilidates the work
previously done by five smaller
facillities scattered about the Seattle area. It's equipped with conventional circus-loading ramps,
but the major loading/unloading
operation is handled by a Piggypacker operating from a paved parking strip flanked by 100-car
capacity tracks. With the flexibility
of side loading/unloading, says NP General Manager J. O. Davies, "Ideally we can have a
trailer delivered to the customer's
door an hour after the cars are set out." The terminal's location
has also permitted improvement in
line-haul operations: "We can make
direct pickups and cuts from the mainline without taking the cars
into our Seattle yard," Davies
points out. "No switching is necessary." [photo of a Piggypacker four-wheeled tractor with NPRy monad
lifting a "cti" 20-ft, ribbed-wall container onto (or possibly off
of) a flush-deck 89-foot Trailer
Train flatcar TTAX 972556]. Seattle,
COFC, TOFC. Trailers. Pig vans, J. O. Davies Compiler C Frissell |
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12/03/02 15:53 |
Chris Frissell |
In the book Northern
Pacific Diesel era, by Schrenk and Frey, Golden West Books, there is a para. on p. 187-188 describing an NP
intermodal experiment in December of
1967, the "Tokyo Express," a TOFC/COFC through freight scheduled at 36 hours from Seattle to Minneapolis-St. Paul. This train is described as an
attempt to demonstrate that "the
time gained in shipping goods from Japan to the Pacific Northwest instead of California could be maintained
in overland shipments to
Chicago." This train is mentioned in a 1967 annual NP traffic
report posted in the modelintermodal group s files section, which, if you haven't
looked, also includes a fascinating
photo of NP container-on-flatbed-on-flatcar cargo
(COTOFC?)<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/modelintermodal/files/npjfc68.JPG> (BTW that report also contains mention
of NP COFC services out of Portland,OR,
Vancouver, WA, and Longview, WA).
Anyone know anything about this train, and whether an
all-intermodal freight stayed on the
NP's coast-to-Twin cities schedule after late 1967? All of the train-view photos I have seen previously of
1960s NP intermodal traffic show a
few TOFC or COFC cars ahead of a string of
regular freight cars. I wonder if the NP proved its point about
the Port of Seattle, but, as I think
Mike Faletti suggested (on the
modelintermodal list), the Milwaukee won the traffic, by virtue
of its direct connection into
Chicago. Also, I have the impression
this lading was overwhelmingly eastbound in the 1960s. I assume the NP and MILW must have run strings of empty
containers and pig vans back to
Seattle? TOFC, COFC, Tokyo Express
, Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Japan, Pacific Northwest, Portland,
Vancouver, Longview, Milwaukee, Chicago, pig vans, containers Compiler C Frissell |
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12/04/02 21:08 |
Bob Montbriand |
Some notes on the import
traffic from the PNW to Twin Cities/Chicago. When I was Sales rep in Detroit , Mi in the early 60s one of
my accounts was K-Mart which was the
major importer thru the PNW. There was a close personal relationship between the MILW rep and the west coast
port rep which was the major factor
in the almost exclusive use of MILW routing. Later I was transferred into the Pricing Dept in
St Paul as AGFA- Transcontinental.
We began a major effort to capture some of this traffic. Two
people prominent in this effort were
Bill Egan (Marketing) and Gus Cobb (Pricing), together with Hank Levinger at the Port of Seattle. We managed
to put together a service/price
package from Seattle to Chicago with the SOO Line (CB&Q refused to join us) which got us a fair chunk of
this tonnage . This action established NP as a legitimate
competitor for the PNW to Chgo
tonnage, and we never looked back. By the time that Milw folded the NP
was the controlling carrier in this
lane. We were able to load some of this
traffic in trailers which had moved loaded westbound but when
containers came into vogue that
opened up another can of worms - but that's another story. Hope this is of some interest. TOFC, COFC, Tokyo Express , Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Japan, Pacific Northwest, Portland,
Vancouver, Longview, Milwaukee, Chicago, pig vans, containers , MILW, west
coast ports, AGFA- Transcontinental,
Bill Egan, Gus Cobb, Hank Levinger, SOO Line, CB&Q , trailers Compiler
C Frissell |